Tax in the cloud – a Vertex story

The first and only tax provider for S/4HANA Cloud, is at it again

Who are we?

Since 1978, Vertex, Inc., has been a leading provider of tax technology and services, enabling companies of all sizes to realize the full strategic potential of the tax function by automating and integrating tax processes, while leveraging advanced and predictive analytics of tax data. Vertex provides cloud-based and on-premise solutions that can be tailored to specific industries for every major line of tax, including income, sales and consumer use, value added and payroll.

Vertex has been one of the original supporters of the SAP Cloud Platform since its inception because we saw the value it provided to our mutual customers. As a result, Vertex developed the integration between Vertex Cloud and S/4HANA Cloud on SAP Cloud Platform through the Co-Innovation Program. As an OEM partner for SAP Cloud Platform for the last several years, this opportunity allowed Vertex to continue to serve our joint customers as the only tax provider for S/4HANA Cloud. To stay in tune with SAP’s strategic direction, Vertex built integration flows inside the Cloud Integration tenant based off the needs of our customers and SAP’s development team.

What did we do?

SAP previously used Vertex developed SAP Integration Component (SIC) as the middleware to Vertex for all indirect tax calculations in S/4HANA Cloud. As of release 1802 SAP decided to call the SAP Cloud Platform Integration for all US indirect taxes. The integration flows allow tax calculation, posting and jurisdiction code determination to happen within S/4HANA Cloud, the same as before. They are easily configured and setup is fully documented.

The integration flows come with several features like logging enhancements, the ability to detect if a duplicate document was posted and they also feature the flexibility to use any of Vertex’s tax solutions like Vertex Cloud, O Series on-premise & O Series on-demand. We diligently worked with SAP to ensure our integration flows meet their strict certification guidelines.

Vertex Cloud simplifies tax automation for the S/4 HANA Cloud customer. We maintain and update content for product taxability and rates from the government jurisdictions. In addition, Vertex Cloud helps customers with their compliance needs.

SAP S/4HANA Cloud users can access Vertex indirect tax solutions from the SAP App Center, simplifying the end-user experience by providing a more seamless buying process and enabling a simpler and faster implementation timeline. Some of the benefits of this integration include:

End-to-end Tax Management -Realize the benefits of an end-to-end powerful SaaS solution to provide your business with all of your tax calculation, reporting and returns – all in one solution.

Lower Cost of Ownership -Reap the rewards and benefits of fast implementation times, easy configuration and lower maintenance. We take the worry out of your monthly updates for you.

Reduced Audit Risk – As a trusted and leading provider of tax technology solutions, Vertex delivers reliable, comprehensive and accurate content in a timely manner.

How does the solution look?

Vertex Cloud gives you better insight into you taxes and overall business. It takes the hassle out of see where all your money is and allows you to file your returns all from one application.

The integration flows were developed to be configured and implemented within minutes. They are easily implemented and can be done by anyone with access to the Cloud Integration. Below is an example of our tax calculation integration flow that shows how your data flows from SAP to Vertex and back.

From the diagram below you will notice there are 3 different paths the transaction can take depending on the tax code used. You can also notice the error handling which sends the specific error code back to SAP when an error occurs. Of course, what is all this without proper logging throughout the process. You can see the message as it gets transformed by setting the integration flow logging to debug or trace. Trace will show you the SOAP message at each transformation and debug will show you the most important details without slowing you down.

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“SAP previously used Vertex developed SAP Integration Component (SIC) as the middleware to Vertex for all indirect tax calculations in S/4HANA Cloud. As of release 1802 SAP decided to call the SAP Cloud Platform Integration for all US indirect taxes.”

Q/R : Can you also provide similar details for Integration between S/4HANA 1709 (Onpremise) and Vertex. Does it has to use SIC as middleware or is there some other integration / middleware required ?